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Kerry calls Kobani’s liberation a big deal

US Secretary of State John Kerry says recapturing the Syrian town of Kobani by Kurdish forces was a "big deal", Press TV reported.

Kerry made the remarks during a trilateral meeting with his Mexican and Canadian counterparts in Boston on Saturday.

The Kurdish fighters retook the strategic town, located on the border with Turkey, from the ISIL Takfiris on January 26, after more than 100 days of fierce fighting with them.

The ISIL terrorists, however, are still scattered in Kobani's southeastern and southwestern countryside.

Kerry further noted that the terrorist group was "forced to acknowledge its own defeat."

"We have a long way to go in the overall campaign, but Daesh - ISIL as some know it - has said all along that Kobane was a real symbolic and strategic objective," he said. "So pushing them out of there is a big deal. And make no mistake, we will also use the same tools that we used to get there - the tools of cooperation and support - to defeat violent, transnational criminal organizations, and ensure that the rule of law thrives for all of our people."

Since September 23, the US and some of its Arab allies -- Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates -- have been conducting airstrikes against ISIL inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate.

Syria has been gripped by deadly violence since 2011 with ISIL Takfiri terrorists currently controlling parts of it mostly in the east.

Reports say more than 200,000 people have been killed and millions displaced due to the foreign-backed militancy plaguing the Arab country.